The Fruit of Gratitude
By Contributing Author/Artist Carl Franz
Illustration by Emma Franz
Illustration by Emma Franz

As I cracked open the shed door, the wonderful aroma of apples gushed out to greet me.
Inside, the displays of red and green fruit were all neatly laid out on their shelves and trays just as I had left them.
It was good practice to keep them spaced apart from each other. That way if one should begin to rot, there was less chance of it spreading over on to the next.
However it was only January and already there had been some losses. so I was paying extra attention on my routine inspections. If any showed signs of browning or white flecks of mould, they must be removed at once.
 
My apples had never known fungicide or pesticide. The only things to have ever touched them were the fluttering wing-tips of sparrows and the occasional probing jaws of insects.
No supermarket would have tolerated the resulting scarred and irregular-shaped rejects. For one thing, they wouldn't keep. And who would choose them over perfectly shaped and uniform fruit; costing just a few pennies?
 
I picked out two of the apples. One good one for myself and one bruised casualty for the birds.
On my way back I noticed the apple tree was deep into her hibernation.
(I thought so at the time anyway.)
 
It had been a late harvest. Some of her apples had hung on in the higher branches well into December.
They were out of reach for me but not the birds.
They picked away at them through the short days to help keep them through the long cold nights.
The blackbirds gradually pecked them away from the top down. Sculpting little bowls that dangled by the core.
Before long the upper branches were festooned with apple chandeliers, wobbling on thin delicate stalks.
 
The winter’s wind came and rocked them about. Rushing at them in long whistling gusts until the spindly stalks finally snapped.
Once all the apples had fallen, the wind set to scraping and sucking at her bare wooden bones; frisking her for the slightest hint of warmth left in her sap.
 
I tossed the soft apple over to a clear patch of short grass.
It made a soft thumping sound as it bounced on the hard ground.
When the ground is hard with frost the worms and grubs are sealed safe inside from probing beaks.
Even the fallen leaves (usually good for turning up a little snack) petrify into artful but solid flagstones.
 
I thought the old apple tree would appreciate me sharing her fruit.
 
She had given everything she could, it was the least I could do.
Her bare branches seemed suddenly naked and vulnerable. They spread out into jagged old fingers in a defensive gesture across the flat grey sky.
 
I reached up to a low branch. The wrinkled bark slipped bumps and grooves under my fingers. Playing back the record of her long waltz around and around the seasons.
The sap waited patiently inside her, pausing between nature’s giant metronome heartbeats. 
 
“Thank you for the apples.” I said.
My breath condensed into useless wispy vapour.
It simply fled away into the wind, reminding me that words are only echoes carved in air.
I centered and tried again, speaking this time from my heart.
 
Thank you for feeding me and all the birds and creatures.
 
The heart’s words precede sound. They unfurl out to the world in a swirling golden apple peel. They are the fruit of the heart.
 
I thought she was sleeping.
I thought she was deep inside herself but then she answered me.
She sang out. She lifted me up inside her magical blackbird song, buoying me up into her branches.
 
And so, dear old apple tree. Even in your sleep you reach out to nourish me.
Photograph by Carl Franz

About the Author:
Author and artist Carl Franz lives in Yorkshire, UK.
He regularly contributes to his local magazine 'Howden Matters' and also features in various websites and magazines.